


Respecting Spades Slick

by Path



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-16
Updated: 2011-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-20 11:48:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 9,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Problem Sleuth, and you're hot on the trail of your one true nemesis, the nefarious Spades Slick. That is, until you discover Spades Slick's secret... because Spades Slick isn't the scariest, angriest, most dangerous man in Midnight City. Spades Slick is the scariest, angriest, most dangerous <i>dame</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt for the Kink Meme:  
>  _Okay, in my headcanon, female!Slick is so guy-ish, unshapely, and uncaring about how people perceive her that she'd be pretty much exactly like her canon self and a lot of people might not even realize she's female. So._
> 
>  _Basically my request is for the fic to start off with Problem Sleuth not actually having realized that Slick is a woman yet. Something tips him off to that (something she says or somebody else says, just something random finally going click, whatever), and it comes as a shock to him because she definitely doesn't fit any of the categories that he tends to put women into: she's not a hysterical dame, she's not a nervous broad, she's not a flighty bird, she doesn't even fit as a femme fatale!_
> 
>  _This also makes it impossible for him to stop looking at her differently. He's drawn to her. Somehow, he's finding the most ruthless, dangerous gangster in the city attractive._

You always assumed that Spades Slick had something to hide. But you'd figured it was just a bunch of bodies and a past darker than his shell.   
So you only gave him a cursory background inspection when you found your place in the city. Of course you'd never met him- you didn't even know his name. But everybody knew about the Archagent of Derse, more about the idea of him than the actual man. Like a bear known by its den, Spades Slick was more story than truth. All you knew was he was dangerous, he was angry, he had a dozen grudges weighing on him, and that this town was his.

You figured he surrounded himself with the Midnight Crew the way he picked out his weapons; Hearts Boxcars'd be the bastard sword, Diamonds Droog the stiletto, Clubs Deuce the switchblade. Have something for every occasion. You yourself take the practical approach to this. Prospitians just have different inventories. Different worlds. Dead worlds. But for you, at least, the key to your office is all you'll ever need.

But now you're finally face to face with Spades Slick, and you have to wonder if you were just plain wrong about him. Because things just don't feel right.

For one, he's completely unapologetic, without guilt, without fear. Spades Slick is a little ball of dark energy, all anger and cruelty and teeth. He snarls at the world for inconveniencing him, and you've never met anybody so defiant of absolutely nothing.

You are sort of fascinated by Spades Slick. With Kingpin deposed, you're in need of a target to direct your passion for poetic justice at, and while Spades Slick is easily as corrupted and corrupting as your former landlord, what really draws you are their differences. Aside from the mutual love for disorganized crime, they couldn't be less alike, really. At heart, Kingpin was a bruiser, a big man who found his power in being big and making small people regret being born that way. He kept whores and ran speakeasies and made illicit alcohol; things that made people lose sight of how bad things are and abandon themselves to the things he'd offer. Then he'd overwhelm them with his brute strength and hordes of goons, and obliterate people's free will.

In a way, he makes you really respect Spades Slick. First, he's not an actual ascended/descended demon-king, and he is really inherently a _person_ to boot. You can tell as soon as you meet him. Kingpin was a caricature of himself; Spades Slick is all too real.

Because he's short. There are probably other reasons, but that's a big one (haha). He's short and pretty skinny, and where Kingpin ruled through strength, Spades Slick has only got weakness. He's short in temper too, every couple of sentences degenerating into a tangle of curses and screams. And that's why he's so dangerous. Kingpin was just strong. Spades Slick has compensated for his weakness with a crew of psychopaths and an inventory as full of sharp blades as that piranha maw he calls a mouth.

Finally, instead of running speakeasies full of booze and prostitutes, he runs the town. He's got the officials in his pockets more securely than Kingpin ever could- probably because he's so much more terrifying when he's leaning up growling at you like some sort of terrifying black armoured shark. Slick doesn't fool people. He doesn't try. Everybody knows how bad things are; what they do about it is up to them. Kingpin's operation was one of deception; Spades Slick's is one of bleak truth.

So now he's strong, has individual people watching his back, and still carries a chip around on his shoulder. And that's why he's so scary.


	2. Chapter 2

So you're scared of him. But more than that, you're obsessed. You like to think of it as having one of those grim passionate pursuits. You're the man who makes his own law, he's the wild card gangster who runs the whole town. Together you've got something.

The guys are starting to look at you strangely. You can't stop narrating your hunt for Spades Slick. You've never felt this way about any criminal. So when you do finally meet the man in person, it's sort of one of the most exciting days of your life. The night before, you make sure to have a last impassioned night with your girl, just in case the mobster sends you down with concrete shoes or puts a lead shot through your chest: everything a detective hot on the heels of his greatest nemesis could want.

Your dame is predictably tolerant of your dramatic last night in her arms. She wears her corset- just a normal one, a nice present when you had a bit extra dough after rent and your bills. Not any of that scale business; that sort of stuff's fun once and then you just get all self-conscious about it. At any rate, she obligingly makes you your last? dinner and consents to you spending the night, and the two of you have a memorable time before you go off to pursue the most dangerous man on two planets.

You appreciate it. She's a lot less heavy on the faucets than most dames you know (and baby, you've known all kinds), and remarkably indulgent of you. But maybe that's because you pretty much made her up out of pure imagination. Your Imagination still isn't as great as Pickle Inspector's, so she's still got most of what you associate with ladies- emotional, high-strung. High maintenance. But for tonight, anyhow, she just plays along and lets you be dramatically hardboiled over your Last Supper and later, in her brass bed with the flowery sheets and flowery smell in the air.

Some days you can't imagine you, well, imagined her.


	3. Chapter 3

But now, you're facing down Spades Slick. You timed it just right to take out the others. Boxcars and Deuce are pursuing a wild goose lead on a warehouse that'll prove to be claimed by a bunch of Kingpin's lackeys scrabbling for ground. Droog is incapacitated, lying unconscious and locked in his room. That was tricky. You don't want to talk about it.

So it's just you and Spades Slick, in the back room of his empty club. There's a spade on his door, and everything is black and dark grey and sharp, sharp white like your shell wet in the rain. You are thrumming with deep-pulsing adrenaline and anxiety like it's your first date and you're about to fake a stretch to get your arm around the girl. Yes, you realize you could have used a different metaphor, but it's exactly right. You are happy to be around Spades Slick. Happy, excited, jittering with the idea of pinning him down and bringing him to justice. Gumshoe justice.

Yes. That is what you want to do with Spades Slick. You know it just looking at him, the way he paces and snarls like nobody you've ever met before, all thinly-contained fury and teeth.

And you know that something about him is wrong. But you don't know what.

You don't bandy a bunch of words around; you two ain't the type. And it's not long before you're dodging sword blades and knives and a couple types of sharp things you can't even name. Spades Slick is dangerous. But you are too, and with the help of a DETECTIVE TECH or two, you leap out from your impromptu cover behind his desk and wrestle him to the ground, getting his hands behind his back and a knee between his shoulder blades as he snarls and wriggles like you'd pinned a tiger, and not a man a handful of inches shorter than you.

Oh yeah. This is exactly what you imagined. Your polar opposite, your perfect nemesis. Nobody will ever challenge you like Spades Slick. He's simply the best criminal there is. You feel infinitely rewarded, the flush of a quick job well done, the promise of future payoff. It's perfect. Now you can just disarm him, drag him down to the station, and you'll be well on your way to having the perfect nemesis forever, thus keeping yourself in excitement, work, and hardboiled action for the rest of your life.

You cuff him behind his back with a pair of handcuffs you kept the last time you were hauled in to the station yourself, and flip him over to straddle him. As a precaution, you've got a hand around his throat to keep the teeth away. The other rips his jacket open and checks the pockets. You toss half a dozen sharp objects across the room and out of Spades Slick's reach.

Something in his eyes changed when you flipped him over. His teeth are still bared, but he's stopped snapping at you like some sort of animal. And he's giving you a look that doesn't just say "I'm going to murder you". Now it seems to say, "I am going to murder you slowly and painfully and I will not even enjoy it".

And that frightens you.

But not as much as the realization you get when you pat him down for more weapons and realize that he is just not built the same as you. Your heart gets tossed off a bridge wearing concrete shoes, and the impact with the water is devastating.

Because Spades Slick is not the scariest, angriest, most vicious man you've ever taken down. Spades Slick is the scariest, angriest, and most vicious _dame_.


	4. Chapter 4

"Uhhhhhhh," you say, diplomatically. Suddenly you don't know what to do with your hands.

This is just not right. This can't be happening.

There's an understanding between fellas of your type. You'll throw each other around and shoot each other coldly. You'll rifle through a guy's belongings and tie him to a chair and wrestle him with no thought about it (well, no real important life-changing ones, anyhow). But a dame, that's something else. You don't touch dames, except your own. You keep your hands in your pockets and your hat over your eyes and you stay suspicious. You can't read dames. Dames are all confusing and crazy.

You feel completely at sea over this one. What do you do?

>Consider what you know about dames.

Well, there's yours. She's easy enough; the least frustrating lady you've ever encountered (and thus, the only one you've ever settled down with for any length of time). She's still crazy. She flips out over the weirdest shit and she has a supernatural sense for when you're in over your head. She doesn't show up to help. She shows up to flip the fuck out at you afterwards and lecture you like she's your mom and you're ten and just put a baseball through the neighbor's windshield. If "your mom" is "your girlfriend", and it was a man who ended up with a hole in him, and you didn't put a baseball through him but a 9mm bullet.

Pickle Inspector's girl is equally crazy, but with a bonus helping of Pickle Inspector's own vague wack-job OCD. You feel weird saying that you don't know her considering how well you know Pickle Inspector, but his Imagination was always way better than yours. She might actually be a well-developed character somewhere beyond her freakish similarity to her boyfriend.

You're not going to get into Ace Dick's girlfriend.

Other than that, you pretty much just know a bunch of prostitutes (this is Ace Dick's fault) and Snowman, who is of course glamourous and dangerous. She's aloof, calm, cynical. Beautiful. Terrifying.

>Conclude.

You have no fucking idea what to do about Spades Slick. You can barely use the right pronoun.

Meanwhile, Spades Slick glares up at you with furious white eyes. Then she (she, holy crap what what what what what) hauls back and gives you a vicious headbutt.

You reel back dizzily and cough out a host of comforting expletives.


	5. Chapter 5

You have never been headbutted by a girl before. The experience is disorienting. You are still recovering from it when Spades Slick hauls... _her_ self up to her knees, hands still cuffed behind her back, and staggers to her feet. She leaps at you, altogether even more frightening for the lack of arms. She's just all teeth and fury.

You end up pretty much the reverse of your previous position- Spades Slick straddles your chest, shoes digging into your ribs, and you helplessly below her. You don't even struggle. You can't. She's a _girl_.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Spades Slick asks you. There's no sign in her voice of anything but rage. No posture of femininity, no simple graceful weakness or passionless calm. Spades Slick is made of rage and sharp shoulders and, you still can't get over it, manliness? You felt her, the smooth curve of her side and the slim stomach falling away beneath the sharpness of her chest shell.

But you can't see that, with snarling, demanding Spades Slick wrestling you to the ground. All you see is the suit, strong shoulders and cut flat across the chest. You see the jaw, thrust forward and set. You see the collar popped open the reveal the shine of shell, casual and careless. There is nothing feminine about Spades Slick.

Oh god you are so confused. You look up at her with an expression of dismay and distress. "You're... you're a..." you manage, and Spades Slick gets a look of such disgust on her face that you feel for a moment she's peeled you off the bottom of her shoe. Her pointed, black, men's gangster shoe.

"If one more idiotic word drags itself out of your mouth, you fucking disgrace for a private detective, I'm going to make you choke on it," she says. One more idiotic word drags itself out of your mouth.


	6. Chapter 6

The resulting beating makes you wish you'd been thrown off a bridge. At the end of it, you limp home to your apartment, blow your lock off for the umpteenth time, and stumble in.

She beat the crap out of you. Only some deep-seated understanding of your own best interest made you find the ability to escape at all, because you were so completely off your game that no amount of effort really made a difference. You were still reeling, and not just from that wicked headbutt that you think might have cracked your face open.

How could this have happened?

There's a knock at your door. You stumble towards it clutching your poor cracked chest.

>Answer it in a more hardboiled fashion.

You pull your hat low over your eyes while you hold onto your side. At least this way, your guest won't see the blood seeping out of the crack on your head. Outside, you can hear a click, then a whirr, and then a terrifying chewing grinding angry sound. You back the fuck away from the door right before your girlfriend opens it with her lipstick.

The resulting lecture makes you wish you'd been thrown off a bridge. At the end of it, Dame drives you to the hospital, which is the most un-noir thing you've ever done, directly after getting brutally beaten by Spades Slick, the girl.

Which is the only thing you can think about through your girlfriend's rant about your safety and her worry and whatever else she was talking about. Spades Slick is a lady. And she beat the snot out of you.

You lie awake all night when you get home, nursing a dozen patches in a half-dozen places, a concussion, and a cracked shell. Dame sleeps soundly beside you, having evidently decided to take care of you since you can't take care of yourself. Maybe she said as much. You weren't listening.

You were too busy thinking about Spades Slick.


	7. Chapter 7

The days are passing. You have cases to attend to. Your shell slowly knits itself back together, and only a faint greyness to the patched areas shows where you've had your defenses cracked open. Your mind doesn't demonstrate such signs of stress, but you have to believe it got cracked too, because you can think of nothing but Spades Slick.

Recover pearls. Prove innocence. Discover corruption. Find missing cat. Spades Slick Spades Slick Spades Slick, through the entire week, her narrowed white eyes beacons in your mind, making the rest of the world dim and cloudy and just her as bright as Skaia.

Dame thinks you still have a concussion, that the crack on your head hasn't mended properly. Maybe she'll go aggress the hospital instead of you. You lose yourself in work and walk the streets at night. You've always liked that, seeing the haze surrounding streetlights, the glint of them off the wet streets, buildings towering above in blocks of black and sharp white windows.

But now they're your refuge, as you drift through them purposelessly. Just an excuse to think about her more. And to figure out what you're going to do.

You were supposed to be nemeses. That was the plan. But now you can't get her out of your head, and you don't want to, and how are you supposed to hate a guy when he's actually a dame in disguise? And should you, and can you fight back, and would you?

And you keep thinking it, right until your footsteps lead you smack into a short dark figure in the night, and you practically trip over Spades Slick in the dim alleyway.


	8. Chapter 8

She turns on you with a snarl and a drawn switchblade, and you're backed up against the bricks before your fumbling fingers can get a grasp on your keys. You stare down past the blade's glint in too little light, past the fingers gripping the handle and up to the eyes, white and glaring under her hat.

"Oh, it's you," says Spades Slick. "Whaddaya got on me this time, ace detective? Somebody break into your office and you need to know who let you out?"

"Uh," you say, and swallow. Your mouth is dry. The signals you're getting are would make a compass spin. Belatedly, you notice the rest of the Midnight Crew arranged behind her, a wall to block you off from the rest of the city. You glance at them distractedly. Clubs Deuce jitters and holds his hat. Hearts Boxcars waits patiently for the word. And Diamonds Droog lights up a cigarette, eyes glinting white like Slick's knife in the fire from his lighter. He affects a lazy, relaxed posture but his eyes are watching you intently. Killer's eyes.

Spades Slick waits for something out of you. Some bit of repartee, just a hint that you're ready to fight. But you've got nothing, and as she realizes it, a faint smirk appears. She shoves you back into the wall, laugh echoing harshly against the alley walls. "Go on, Problem Sleuth," she tosses over her shoulder to you. "Keep scrounging the gutters for something you can pretend is a case."

She waves her hand; the Crew files out of the alley. Then she stabs the knife straight into the brick beside your eye and snarls at you again, up in your face and the center of the world. "Fucking leave me alone, failure, I don't need you poking into all my business just because you've got some sick delusion about me now."

You decide to say more words. A few idiotic ones drag themselves out of your mouth. "But you're a-"

She shows you her stabs. Rips the knife clean out of the brick and down into the soft line between your chestplate and neck and Molasses Fats on toast, it is agonizing. You drop to the pavement and look up at her, short and angry and full of snarling rage, holding a knife covered in your blood. She bends down toward you, and your OBSESSION BAOBAB decides to surprise you. It absorbs a hefty amount of TEMPTATION WATER and you catch your breath suddenly, your brain feeling like it's breaking under the stress of reacting to Spades Slick the angry gangster and trying to understand Spades Slick the secret woman.

She doesn't kiss you. Of course she wouldn't, why would you even think that. She leans next to you and mutters, "Fuck you, Problem Sleuth. Keep your mouth shut and fucking leave me alone. Even Droog didn't take this long to get over it."

And then she's gone. You bleed in the alleyway and listen to her voice echoing around in your head like it's bouncing off bricks.


	9. Chapter 9

Dame busts in and takes your new door off about thirty seconds after you limp into it, brandishing her lipstick in a terrifying whirl of death. This time, at least, she flips out while she drives you to the emergency room, in a way making the whole experience more efficient, and in another way, condensing the terror that is her rage and the fearful spectacle that is her driving into one heart-stopping guilt trip to the hospital.

After that, a man with a bunch of steel tools pokes them into your shoulder and you puke all over the hospital room, and that's the best part of your night.

Keep your mouth shut. Leave her alone. Dame ushers you into the car and drives you home in silence. You lie awake with the streetlights gleaming in the window and wonder if you'll ever sleep again. Leave her alone. Keep your mouth shut. After long thoughtless hours you slip out to the stoop and light up a smoke.

In the darkness you keep imagining white eyes blossoming open out of the empty night. Leave her alone. You take a long breath and lean into the door frame. Her voice in your ear, the faintest breath on your neck. Keep your mouth shut.

"What are you doing?" comes Dame's voice from the house.

"Nothing," you say. "Go back to bed."


	10. Chapter 10

After that life derails. You spend days in your office thinking. If your phone wasn't broken you wouldn't notice it ring anyhow. You forget to eat and Pickle Inspector brings you tea, full cups which sit and stay full cups on the edge of your desk. It's a new collection. Inspector's tea cups.

You aren't going out so much. You'll just find yourself wandering into back alleyways, waiting to get assaulted as you meander purposelessly through the violent night. Spades Slick made this city, and she made it in her image. It's as bad as the stories they used to tell about Derse's streets, but a hundred times worse because nobody on Prospit had any idea what bad times were really like. Midnight City knows all too well, and its people absorb the understanding like sponges, pulling up colour with the water and forever dyeing themselves.

You have an abrupt realization, alone in your office with the sun playing through the slats. You haven't been home in a day, and you feel grimy and grim. Alone in the world, with Spades Slick's voice haunting you. Then it hits you, out of nowhere, that this is the life you've always dreamed about. Some dame descended into your life and knocked you senseless, and since then you've lived a ghost in your own life, drifting through beatings and cigarettes, stitches and threats, pulled on by her words in your mind. You narrate them over and over.

Your internal monologue is the best it's ever been. You can't get more noir.

You are completely miserable.

You sling your trenchcoat over your shoulder and head home- your home, not your girlfriend's. In a dream, you clean up and dress. Shirt. Pants. Tie. Hat. Corn. Coat. Smokes.

Keys.

Then you let yourself out into the night and go to find Spades Slick.


	11. Chapter 11

It's not hard. She owns this town. You walk straight into the big club in the middle of town and have yourself a seat at the bar. You toss a coin at the bartender and sip your whiskey and wait.

Half an hour of patient brooding meditation later, a dark figure in a black suit slips into the seat next to you.

"Go away," says Diamonds Droog.

"I'm a paying customer," you say without looking up. "Thought you didn't like alienating your customers."

Diamonds Droog smiles thinly. "We can make an exception. Get lost, Problem Sleuth. Slick's not going to see you tonight."

"I can wait," you say.

"You'll be waiting for nothing." Then Diamonds Droog slips out of his seat and leaves you at the bar. A pianist and a singer get up on the small stage and start into a set. Her voice curls in the air like smoke. You wait for nothing.

Nothing pays off in the form of Clubs Deuce, hopping up on the stool next to you.

"Oh, hi Problem Sleuth," he chirps.

"Heya Deuce," you say evenly. "Slick around?"

"Yep, in the back," he says. "Slick says to say he's not in and to tell you to go put some keys in your mouth and blow your brains out. But I don't think you should do that. It sounds pretty dangerous!"

"Danger is my middle name," you say in your badass film hero voice.

"Problem Danger Sleuth?" asks Deuce. "I didn't know you had a middle name."

You tell him not to worry about it, and then suggest that he go tell Slick to let you in.

"Oh, sure, Problem Sleuth! No problem!" Deuce wanders off and you lose sight of him immediately in the sea of tables. Any minute now.

A minute later, a shadow falls over you. The third billy-goat gruff is here to see if the troll won't bugger off and leave his boss alone.

"Time to go," growls Hearts Boxcars.

You turn around and smile at him, holding your whiskey. "Come on, Boxcars, I'm just having a drink."

He puts his hand on the back of your collar. It is about the size of your head. "Slick says to show you the street."

"You sure, big guy? I'm not causing a disturbance or anything."

His jaw sets. "Causing trouble all the same."

>Cause trouble.

You smash your glass on the table and throw the remains in his face. Boxcars howls and claws at his eyes, and you duck under the flailing and head for the back, weaving through the rapidly-exiting crowd. You meet Clubs Deuce as you go.

"I think Boxcars needs your help!" you tell him in an urgent voice, and he runs over right away.

You crack open the back door and duck back as a pool cue comes down out of nowhere. Droog pursues, wielding the cue like a fencer's foil. You keep ducking and sidestepping, tossing chairs in front of him, right until you hit the stage and are cornered.

"Get out, Problem Sleuth," says Droog calmly.

"Hey, hey," you say. "I'm sure we can all come to a mutually beneficial conclusion here."

The look on his face is not promising. Or rather, it promises a good deal, none of which is friendly and all of which is violent. You're not sure he's open to negotiations.

>PS: Battle Technique: Unconditional Surrender

You immediately hand over the bullets you'd been holding onto. They're his now. No need for further arbitration. This discussion is over.

Droog falls to the floor with a few grazes and one deep shoulder wound. You didn't kill him, though. That wouldn't be very peaceable of you. Besides, it's bad form to kill the allies of your... of your...

Dammit. You don't know how to finish that sentence. You stalk past Droog and his little pool of blood and push the back door open. In for a penny, in for a pounding.


	12. Chapter 12

The hallway lets out at a swanky club room. Spades Slick sits at the table with her back to you, doing something with a knife. As you let the door close behind you, she snarls without turning, "Will you just tell him to fuck off, already?"

"Why don't you tell him yourself," you say. Already your heart is speeding on ahead; you have to grit your teeth just to talk calmly.

She whirls, a look in her eyes like a cornered animal- and a real dangerous one, too. "Godfucking dammit, you just don't know when to quit, do you?"

"I never know when I'm beat," you say. "You can leave me dying on the pavement and it'll never clue in."

She bares her teeth. They are frighteningly sharp, armour-piercing jags of white. "Guess you're an even worse detective than I thought."

You lean against the door. "I tracked you down, didn't I?"

Her eyes narrow. "Because you think you know something about me, hotshot fuckup detective?"

"Because I know more about you than anybody else in this city. And that's got to mean something."

She cautiously slips from her chair, strong angles and tensed shoulders prominent. Spades Slick circles towards you, knife still in hand. "And what's the meaning?" she demands. "Whaddaya want, now you've got me all figured out?" She spreads her arms wide, knife dangling.

You raise your burnt-out eyes to hers. What can you say? You don't know what you want. You just want... her. However that works out. Your eyes lock. Your heart beats.

Beat.

Beat.

She is watching you with a look of growing horror, teeth half-bared and white eyes widening. How can you say it? That you've spent a week starving for her, that you spent years before now pursuing her before you even knew her. That you barely know her now but you can't stop thinking about her. That you don't know what to ask of her but you'd take anything, you'd take everything she'd give you and ask for more. You can't say it.

You let your eyes speak instead.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

She turns away, and tosses the knife aside. You let out a long breath, and turn to let yourself out.

You turn back just in time to catch Spades Slick as she leaps at you.


	13. Chapter 13

For a moment, everything is teeth and tongue and arms scrabbling at each others' carapaces, clasping and grasping at each other's head and arms. You pull her close and the two of you go straight down, overbalanced by aggressive decision you're not used to compensating for.

There's nothing soft between you, just sharpness of teeth and claws, except for her tongue lashing into your mouth, swirling hot and wet there and retreating. She's straddling your chest again, leaving pointed-toe bruises where the last ones had almost vanished.

Once the first moment of shocking pleasure starts to settle in for the long haul, she gets a hold on your wrists and forces them up over your head. No, no, you struggle, you need to be touching her, raking white fingers over her black shell and ripping off the suit hiding her, seeing what you already know (you among the whole city) is there.

But damn does she have a good grip, and the benefit of gravity, and you're left straining below her and struggling to meet her mouth again. It's twisted in a sardonic smile, amused at your desperation, and you settle for her neck. You trace the line of her shell with your tongue, dipping in to touch the softer flesh in the join meeting her shoulder; she put a knife in you there, but now it's she's the one squirming.

She loosens her hold and you wriggle a hand free, fumbling at her shirt buttons. She shrugs out of her coat, tossing it to the side, and you take advantage of her hands being caught in it to run your hands straight up her front, up the slim waist concealed by the man's shirt, the smooth curve to her chest plates. Your fingers dip into the creases and crevices, light touches to that same soft flesh that made her groan and arch before.

But now she's batting your hands away, ripping buttons off your own shirt and bending to lick through your own scars and joins. Your shaking hands find her back and cling there. Then her own hot tongue is tracing up your chest, the slim join at the center and that line of aching _yessss_ wherever she touches it. Her terrifying teeth sink in for the first time when she reaches your neck, hooking into the plate and crunching through. Pain burns beneath, bright in your vision like magnesium fires; bright like Slick's eyes.

You manage to turn your howl of pain into a low continuous growl. She leaves punctured fang marks in a half-ring at your collar. You think faintly through pain and the accelerating feeling of falling, _that's never gonna heal nice_. It's not a problem. You barely have the presence of mind to make it an observation. The entire rest of your body and mind are wrapped up in Spades Slick and the incredible pain and desire she sparks in you.


	14. Chapter 14

She's sliding down your body, now, laying trails of aching heat along your body, finding every crack and join in your shell and dipping into it. She's still almost entirely dressed, still looking like the Spades Slick you saw from a distance for years. As she bends over you you can't tell for sure she's not him, your nemesis, the man you'd worked yourself up to equalling. Her shirt is looser at the collar than his and she's got a light in her eyes you never saw when you were pointing your pistol at him from across the room.

There's a sudden and severe disconnect, with that realization, sort of like your mind was hanging by a single string and you never even knew, and now it's snapping enough to give you whiplash. You don't care who's over top of you. You just need Spades Slick and you'll do anything to keep her. Or him. If that's what you've got to pretend, to broadcast to the world, what you've got to keep your mouth shut about and never let another person know, you'll do it.

You have never wanted anybody so badly before, so strongly it overrode everything you've held dear in the past. If there's one thing you've done your entire life, it was to thoroughly dissect the hidden and concealed; revealing it and holding it open so everybody who came after you would know what it really was. No door unopened. No puzzle unsolved. No monster unslain, no criminal unpunished- no matter how lengthy and convoluted the procedure.

But this is one criminal you'll never punish, one mask you'll never rip away. Spades Slick has owned you from the moment you found her out and you didn't even know it.

And now she's palming you through the front of your pants and all you can do is reel from the sensation and the consuming desire twisting in your stomach and making your heart beat a billion times a minute. Your fingers twitch and clasp at her shoulders, digging in your not-as-sharp-as-her claws as a lifeline, because you're drowning out here. She makes a sound, at that, a low growl of pleasure, and you try again, sinking them through her shirt and dragging them down. When she checks them in the mirror tomorrow there'll be sets of four white lines across her back and it'll be like you etched your name into her.

She wriggles out from your grasp and seizes your wrists, managing both in one hand by puncturing your wrists and digging her claws in. You gasp in pain again and arch your hips as she pushes your arms back down to your chest. Then she smirks, and digs in her pocket, and puts that same damn set of handcuffs on you, and you don't even care, because she's slid back on top of you to straddle your hips and is giving you just enough freedom to rock beneath her. You're hard as steel since the moment she first touched you, and Spades Slick is riding on top of you; your nemesis and everything you could want in the world.

So neither of you freeze in time when footsteps come down the hallway and the door swings open.


	15. Chapter 15

You do both look up, though.

The rest of the Midnight Crew looks back. Clubs Deuce plays with a big shard of glass, Hearts Boxcars glares out from a face of modestly bleeding cuts, and Diamonds Droog, also bleeding, just gives you both a look of horrified doom. His fingers slip up to press against his forehead and he looks like he's trying to vanish into the door frame.

"Hey, Slick!" says Deuce, eternally and blissfully ignorant, "and oh, hello Problem Sleuth. I didn't see you there."

Droog groans, Boxcars looks like he's about to explode, and you look back to Spades Slick, who seems to be reeling from mood whiplash. She takes a deep breath (the better to yell with, no doubt), and just opens her mouth to say something when a low biting growl rips through the air and the head of a chainsaw opens the barred fire door at the back of the room.

Your girlfriend takes in the situation. The Midnight Crew, armed, injured, and angry. You, on the floor, bleeding lightly out of a handful of claw- and bitemarks, shirt open and hands cuffed. And Spades Slick, holding you down.

She screams with her usual unholy rage and flies at Slick.


	16. Chapter 16

The hospital patched you up and asked if you'd like to join a Frequent Brawler Club. The station took your cuffs off for you, the sergeant only offering an amused musing on what you get when you retain police property. He kept the cuffs.

And no lectures. Dame is eerily silent as she takes you around to get fixed up. You would prefer it if she yelled at you or maybe came at you with her lipstick. That would be pretty preferable right now. But she just presses her lips together and keeps driving and stays in the car to wait for you while you get stitched up and released.

You've really botched it up this time. How stupid do you have to be?

She brings the car to a stop in front of your apartment. You stare at it for a minute, your hat in your hands, before you cautiously look back to Dame. She's staring straight ahead and her mouth is zipped shut. Jeez, you tool, what did she ever do but help? Goddammit, you wish there was something else you could do here, but you feel just as helplessly out of your league as she must. She's just got the added bonus of you being a two-timing asshole.

And she still took you to the clinic. What is wrong with you? This is your fault, somehow. She's here because of you, in as many ways as that can be taken. If she's messed up, it's because you made her that way.

You get out of the car. You're not going to make her sit in there waiting for you anymore.

The look she gives you is half furious, half unhappy, and all betrayed. You bow your head and close your eyes to block it out. "I'm sorry, Dame," you say, and your voice sounds ruined in your ears. "You don't deserve this." Then you put on your hat and walk in a quiet world towards your door, expecting at any moment to hear her rev up the chainsaw and try to put it in you, you cheating scumbag.

But the only thing that breaks the silence is the low purr of her car driving away.


	17. Chapter 17

God, why did you say it?

You could have brushed it off and fixed it up. You could have gone home with Dame. You can't stop replaying it.

"Wait," you said, pushing Spades Slick off you and getting in front of her.

Your girlfriend, chainsaw jumping in hand, looked at you with an expression of bafflement, and made a hesitant move around you.

You followed, keeping yourself between her and Slick. You extended your hands, cuffed together, and met her eyes. "Dame, you're not going to hurt her. Let's go."

Your girlfriend looked at you, suddenly still. "What did you say?"

"I said, let's go," you repeated, but Dame looks shocked, and from behind you, you hear a sharp clack. You both glance back to Slick smacking herself into a facepalm.

The chainsaw comes to a shuddering stop, and Dame lets it drop to the floor, walking to you. Past you. She stands looking at Spades Slick, getting herself together and pulling herself up off the floor, suddenly full of bluster and contempt again. Dame looks at her, and suddenly you realize what you said.

What you said, what you gave away and can't take back. Keep your mouth shut. Fucking leave her alone, failure. You pace your room and consume an endless line of smokes until your apartment becomes the same hazy den your mind has transformed into. Everything looks the same. Just a landscape of the same mistake, over and over.

You could have said the wrong thing. You could have done it, and Dame wouldn't have known and you wouldn't have given her away, and you could still be...

What? Still be trapped in the same lifeless routine you always were, with a brass bed and a flowery smell that never showed any sign of your presence? Still be deceiving Dame, pretending nothing had changed while inside you were already hunting Spades Slick? Still be what you always were?

But you're not. And now you never will be.

You take off your hat and stare with bloodshot eyes, bleary from the smoke, into your bathroom mirror. You find a bit of grim comfort, stripping methodically down to nothing and looking at yourself there, all the old wounds and patches starting to repair your shell. All the new wounds. You rip the patches off to see them. Besides sleepless nights, they're the only things you've got left of Spades Slick.

And boy, they are bright. The one just below your collar is particularly livid, the punctured shell flushing grey-pink around the half-circle of fang marks. Your lip is cracked, your chest bruised. Everything hurts, and it feels good that it does.

Both betrayed in a single pronoun, goddamn linguistic lynchpin that turned the whole world upside down. And now you don't have either of them.

PROBLEM SLEUTH GAINED A LEVEL!

What.

IMAGINATION +17  
PULCHRITUDE +43  
VIM +2

PROBLEM SLEUTH EXCELLED TO NEW RATING: AGENT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

PROBLEM SLEUTH ACCRUED BATTLE TECHNIQUE: MISERY LOVES COMPANY

Looks like life experience adds up too. Good for you.


	18. Chapter 18

A week ago you walked these streets in a dream, a shadow apart from the world and unfazed by it. Now you're all too much a part of it, dodging screaming cars and taxi drivers, harassed by hooligans, tripping on trash. You walk at night and wait to be assaulted. But nobody ever does. Your reputation precedes you.

They all know you're broke.

So despite the noise it's a peaceful enough walk, giving you lots of time to mentally aggress yourself. Your mantra keeps repeating, generating despair like a water wheel makes energy. Keep your mouth shut. Leave her alone. Keep your mouth shut. Leave her alone. Only two requests and you failed her on both.

You don't think you'll get the chance to make it up to her. Spades Slick seems like a one-chance kind of mobster. With any luck, she'll have Boxcars and Droog beat you up and drop you in the river. You mostly fear even that won't happen. Pretending you didn't exist would be worse than her anger.

And you keep thinking that, and still nobody touches you, until you find yourself stalking that same nameless alleyway you did a lifetime ago, and a small dark figure with angry jags of white teeth stabs you straight in the shoulder.


	19. Chapter 19

You let out a howl of mixed agony and shock and whip out your keys before you even think, firing inadvertently into the darkness. It goes wide in your first rush of adrenaline and hot searing pain. The figure (come on, you know who it is)... you mean, Spades Slick twirls the knife and comes in for you again. You SLEUTH ROLL out of the way and bring your pistol up, catching the blade coming down. It clangs off and Slick swears. The impact makes your hand ring, and a second shot goes off, bringing down a rain of brick dust.

The reprieve only lasts an instant, as she turns the momentum back, ducking and running low towards you. She gives a slash at your legs and you dodge again, but you could feel the wind whistle by your knees.

Shit shit shit she is really trying to kill you, and you can't stand the thought of firing back. You deserve this. Whatever she does to you, you got it coming.

That being said, you really don't want to die. Call it vain, but you've seen too much weird stuff to go down like a punk in an alleyway knife fight. You've still got that much. Slick hangs back this time to judge, and you fire a warning shot by her feet. Rather than discouraging her, she seems to take it as encouragement, and leaps for you again. Goddammit, you are going to end up with that knife in you again, aren't you?

Oh yep, here it comes, Slick racing in from the side to swipe at your gun arm. You throw yourself backwards and away from her, and she laughs bitterly. "So now you don't wanna die, huh?"

You get yourself ready for another attack. "Who does?"

Her lip curls, vicious teeth gritting. "Couple days ago I would have sworn you had a death wish. But now you just won't lay down and let me kill you." She dashes in and swipes, dodging the bullet you fire in her path. She leaves you with a clean cut into your coat, just barely nicking shell on your arm. Your heart is beating a great fast jazz beat into your brain but you can't figure out why you're moving so slowly.

Reluctance, probably. Or maybe it's the blood pulsing out of your shoulder and soaking your coat.

"Not a death wish, Slick," you say sadly. "Just more hope than brains." You steady the pistol at her. Not that you can use it.

"Yeah, surprise surprise, Problem Sleuth botching up a set of simple instructions. Who could imagine that?" She begins coming down at you like Droog did, fencing, a set of rapid slashes from shoulder to waist. You wheel backwards, cross your fingers, and fire into the onslaught.

She breaks it off with a howled curse and gives a brief glance to her shoulder, a long shallow graze carved out. Her eyes immediately dart back to you, and she readies her knife again.

Maybe it's just the adrenaline, but through your misery, you start feeling inexplicably... good. Banter. Action. Knife fights. Real noir. If you hadn't botched up your life so badly, you'd think you were living it right now. "Nobody ever tell you not to bring a knife to a gun fight?" you ask her, momentarily high on your first good feeling in days.

"Funny thing about knives," Slick smiles. "Never run outta knife." Oh, oh right, shit. You spare a glance for your gun as Slick comes in again. One more bullet.

You've got a thing about not using your last bullet.

>PS: Battle Technique: Misery Loves Company

Sure, knives don't run out of ammo. But you and Slick, you're in this together. She just doesn't know it yet. You fling your gun at her.

The ring of keys hits her knife hand, wrap around the knife in a sweet slow-motion shot that both you and Slick marvel at, and wrench it from her. The gun and knife hit the ground a ways down the alley and slide to a stop. No wonder this attack doesn't cost any spondulicks (not that you could afford to pay them). Now neither of you have a weapon. Happy?

Slick looks at you, back to her knife, and makes a run for the knife. You are one step ahead of her, which translates into her actually tripping over you and the two of you tumbling to the pavement in a scuffle of flailing sharp-ended limbs. You take more than one elbow to the shell and a handful of scratches from her claws as she wriggles to get free.

She ends up on top, and looks eagerly to where her weapon fell. Then, slowly, down to you.

The world stops.

Then Spades Slick crushes your mouth against hers.


	20. Chapter 20

And the two of you fall on each other like a pair of starving animals. Her teeth rip open the half-healed cut on your lip and you can already feel a few others starting to crack again. It doesn't matter. Your shoulder is flushed with raw pain, the same as her teeth against you. You want this so badly you feel like you're disintegrating under her attention.

She's ripping your shirt off and savaging your chest, blood from your shoulder already running down the joins in your shell. She licks at it and leaves more puncture marks to ooze on their own. She doesn't seem to have time to savour them. God, you just want more; the world is Slick's tongue, Slick's teeth, Slick's fingers ripping open your pants and shoving in to grab your cock and begin pumping. This is the most urgent, the fastest time you've ever had, but you don't need any more preparation. You've wanted her for weeks and the fact that she's touching you at all, that she's here with you, is enough.

You buck your hips into her hand and pull her back towards you. She starts ruining your mouth some more with her terrifying maw, clenching the back of your head in one hand and pumping you with the other.

In the back of your mind, you think, _somebody's going to see_. Some cop'll stumble by and try to cart the two of you off to the slammer for the night.

"So we'll fuck in the cop car," pants Slick, and you realize belatedly you must have mumbled that out loud. Then she fastens her mouth over your shoulder wound and laps at it and you think you might pass out. Not that it's bad. It's just insanely painful.

And _good_.

"Yes, yes, come on," you find yourself chanting. "More, fuck, harder." Slick gets a crazy gleam in her eyes and you know you're not going to be able to walk in a straight line for a week after this but you just keep egging her on. There're smears of your blood across her mouth and that's perfect, that's what you want, you want her to wreck you and break you and crack you open. Everything inside is hers anyhow.


	21. Chapter 21

She ducks her head and delivers a swipe of her hot, bloody tongue over your cock, tracing into the delicate sliding plates and making you groan. Then she takes the whole thing in her mouth and you suddenly fear for more than your life at the pinpoint touch of teeth. But oh god, the heat, yes.

You're acutely aware of the press of cold concrete against you, but it's not like you're going to ask to stop. Ever. Your body is just going to have to deal and soak it off in a bath later. With... with Spades Slick, if you aren't just a pile of bloody ribbons at the end of this. That is a deliriously good idea.

But it'll come later, after she's beaten you senseless into the pavement. You're content with this idea. More than content. As long as it's Spades Slick, you're pretty much good.

There's not a lot better than what's happening right now anyhow, because even though she's paused, taken her mouth off your cock, she's looked up at you with the least-Spades Slick expression you've ever seen. There's a veneer of aggressive derision over top, but it's paper-thin.

What she looks is vulnerable. Worried. She thrusts her jaw forward and doesn't stammer her words, but you can tell it takes some effort. "We going to fuck in this alley or what?" she asks, trying to phrase it as a demand and not a question. It is entrancing.

You sit up. "Yes," you breathe, and pull her down to the pavement with you. You flip open the first button on her shirt. Her veneer says "Come on, I'm not scared," but you know she is.

But you're not going to mess it up this time. She shouldn't trust you, but she's still doing it and that second chance is all you need. You dive at her neck as you unbutton her shirt, same as she did to you. That feels fair. She makes sounds like her teeth are pulverizing stone and you let the delirious energy of touching Spades Slick wash you away.


	22. Chapter 22

Then everything sort of blends together. Getting her shirt open and running your short claws over her chest, finally seeing for yourself what you knew was true. Beneath the men's clothes, she's sharp and sort of blocky for a woman, but there's that curve, that smooth concave shell you'd never expect. You've never met anyone so desireable, not that you can say that to her what with the claws she's got on her. You'll wait on endearments until you're sure she can't reach her knife, thank you.

Besides, for now you can't stop to just look at her. You're too busy getting her clothes off, and applying your tongue to everything you bare. She's awkward and uncomfortable when you finally get her stripped down (and so, she puts on her challenge face to hide it), but it disappears pretty quickly when you slip a finger up into her opening, rubbing against that hard spot hidden just inside. She gasps and claws at you, and you just bear through her involuntary assault and vow that the scratches don't hurt now. There'll be time for pain later.

At some point she wrestles you back over, snarling and growling like a rottweiler, straddling your leg to stroke you and smirk at your moaning until you get your hand back between her legs and make her start moaning herself. The two of your can't keep away, though- she keeps stooping for you and you keep grabbing her to pull down and mash your lips against hers and feel your tongues and teeth gnash at each other.

Finally she straddles you, slowly sliding onto your cock. There's a moment of nothing, complete stillness, and you look up at her. Holding still, she seems to vanish into the darkness; until she opens her eyes all you can see of her is where your hands touch and the shape they make. Then her eyes open and those white beacons pierce into you and you're completely stunned until she growls, "You planning on stopping here?"

No. You're not planning on stopping, ever. You pull her back down to you and the two of you move together, impassioned furious movements that say _I'm starving and I'll devour you whole_. Distant streetlights trace glinting patterns over your shells, highlight the blood seeping from your many wounds into black pools. The sounds of the city, alive in the night, play behind your sounds, your moans, the two of you together. Jazz cacophonies from half a dozen different clubs, rubber on pavement, the sound of a lighter flicking and voices passing you. How many people have walked by this alley tonight, your thinly-veiled refuge from the world?

All of them, you think. All of Midnight City is swirling around you, you and Spades Slick in the center of the world, and finally you choke. You clasp her back and moan into her mouth on yours and Midnight City, for a second, is silent.


	23. Chapter 23

Epilogue.

As hospital visits go, this one was relatively short. You walk home through the streets and light up a smoke on the way back home, just a handful of bandages and a stitch or two to remind you of what happened last night. That, and a head full of Spades Slick.

Midnight City is quiet in the day. Businesses run quietly; there ain't a bank heist every day, and paperwork's still gotta get filed. Some cities, they drift off to quiet sleep, but Midnight City isn't that kind of dame. She sleeps late into the day and gets up at twilight to play the piano and disturb the neighbors. You know exactly the type. You're going to see a dame just like that right now.

It's no surprise to you why Midnight City is the way she is. Spades Slick made this city, and she made it in her image. And you know what that is. Your city looks rough on the outside and she carries a tommy gun, but nobody who meets her can look away. And you've been to the center of the city, and you know her like nobody else does. And the secret is, she's rough on the inside, too. That's just the kind of lady Midnight City is.

You pass a coffee shop, open twenty-four-seven. A dame is sitting inside, checking through her handbag. It hasn't been so long. You probably shouldn't talk to her. What would you say, anyhow? You were a different person, when you started. A dead person, now. You can't recognize yourself in the mirror but you'll get used to it, and besides, the cut lip suits you.

Then a black carapace in a sharp suit and white tie hands her a cappuccino and sits across from her, and you just think, _Oh. Well, that's alright then,_ and carry on.

The sun hides behind grey skies but still shines on Midnight City. She'll be okay, and you're not sure who you think of when you say that. They all will. Dame. Slick. Midnight City herself.

The sun is starting to set, and the streets are starting to fill. A saxophone, fuzzy in the distance, plays a few experimental notes. Soon people will be spilling out of clubs and mixing in a sea of checkerboard shells, and music will fill the streets.

Spades Slick is still the angriest, scariest, and most vicious thing in the world. But that's okay. That's more than okay. You loved this city for a long time; it's not so surprising you love the one who made it. Midnight City is waking up, and so are you.

And you're going to see Spades Slick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm finally finished.


End file.
